A GOVERMENTAL BUST

As the news media daily stresses the terrible financial situation in which our federal government finds itself, an article appeared that gave real meaning to the huge losses being incurred by Washington. The focus of the report was on our national mail service, commonly referred to as the United States Post Office.

The news was all bad.

Consider these facts: the USPO has approximately 31,000 post offices /locations; there are 600,000 people employed by the USPO; there are approximately 218,000 vehicles owned by the USPO; and there are over 200 federal statutes that govern the functioning of this very visible government agency.

The worst new was that for the fiscal year 2010, the USPO operated at a $8,500,000,000.00 loss. That figure again, in more readable form, is a lost of $8.5 Billion.

One of the glaring negative reports found in the article was the statistic that almost 10% of the USPO locations generated annual sales of less than $27,500.00.

As our government leaders (and that term, leaders, is used very loosely) spar over how to begin balancing the federal budget and how much more, if any, to increase the authorized federal debt, our USPO executives are considering closing some 3000 locations and terminating some "significant" but undefined number of positions and restricting the current daily deliveries to rural areas and eliminating all Saturday operations. Of course these above described contemplated acts would impact the USPO operations and hopefully diminish its expenses. However, achieving even one location shut-down or even a slight employee lay off would be a major political incident and be subject to much in the way of delay and backroom negotiations.

Without a huge showing of guts by our political leaders and by our government agency executives coupled with a willingness by ordinary American citizens to accept less in the way of government benefits, this USPO problem as well as all other Washington financial problems will continue to fester. The potential outcome is a terrible economic failure in the America.